As a health/fitness/politics junkie, this report is like catnip to me, so I was pretty eager to get my grubby little paws on a copy.

Let’s take a look inside….

The Cost of Obesity in Canada

The committee’s findings show the vast scope of this epidemic:

Each year 48,000 to 66,000 Canadians die from conditions linked to excess weight;

Nearly two thirds of adults and one third of children are obese or overweight; and

Obesity costs Canada between $4.6 billion and $7.1 billion annually in health care and lost productivity

In short: Canada’s obesity problem is way too big to be ignored

How did this happen???

1. Nutrition

In terms of eating habits, the committee was told that since the 1980s, Canadians have decreased their intake of high fat foods and increased intakes of fruits and vegetables, as recommended by the food guide. However, consumption of processed, ready-to-eat and snack foods have shown the largest increase over this period.

Over this period of time (80s – present), a review of Canada’s food guide reveals that Canadians have been told to switch…

from a diet of a modest number of daily servings reflecting a balance of whole foods

to a low fat diet that permits significantly more servings per day, a large proportion of which should be grain products, or carbohydrates.

The committee was told that, as a result, the food guide may be recommending a diet that is nutritionally insufficient with respect to vitamins D and E, potassium and choline and that only by eating artificially fortified and highly-processed cereals can the diet provide adequate levels of calcium, iron and vitamin B12

According to 2012 data only 40% of Canadians are eating even the lower recommended number of fruit and vegetables per day, 5 servings.

The food guide recommends that adults should be consuming closer to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

At the same time, Manuel Arango, of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, indicated that as much as 62% of the Canadian diet can be categorized as highly-processed, a percentage that has been rising in recent decades at the expense of whole foods.

As a consequence of the increased intake of highly processed foods, sugar consumption has increased dramatically from 4 pounds annually per person 200 years ago to 151 pounds annually per person today.

The overwhelming consensus among witnesses with respect to food consumption trends was that the consequence of Health Canada’s evolving food guide and the increasing variety and availability of processed and ready-to-eat foods has been a pronounced decrease in consumption of whole foods and alarming increase in the consumption of ultra-processed foods.

As a result, Canadians are eating too much calorie-rich and nutrient-poor food.

In short:Canadians eat too much processed food and not enough real food.

2. Physical Activity (or lack thereof)

Regarding physical activity, the committee heard that the participation rate in organized sport among Canadians has not declined in recent decades, and may have increased. However, several witnesses emphasized that although participation in such activities is encouraged, it does not by itself ensure that Canadians, especially children, are getting sufficient exercise.

They described how many of these activities include a significant amount of sedentary time and that they tend to lead people into thinking that they are doing more than enough to be considered as being physically active. Members heard, for example, sports such as hockey, soccer or basketball include a lot of instruction time outside of games, and a lot of bench time during games, when participants are idle.

More importantly, several witnesses suggested that it is the decline in active, free play among children and a decline in the activities of daily living among adults that have primarily contributed to an overall decrease in physical activity.

150 minutes per week for adults aged 18-64 years including some bone and muscle strengthening exercises,

and similar guidance for seniors over 65 years with exercises aimed at improving balance and reducing the risk of falls.

In addition the guidelines recommend that:

children under four not be sedentary for more than one hour at a time.

Children and youth are advised to limit screen time to no more than two hours per day while limiting sedentary behaviour, indoor activities and motorized transport.

Unfortunately, a minority of Canadians are meeting these goals.

Although 50% of Canadians believe they meet the physical activity guidelines when asked, in fact, when objectively measured, only 15% of adults are actually getting the recommended 150 minutes of physical activity per week.

On average, Canadian adults obtain only 12 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per day.

Similarly, children and youth are largely failing to meet the recommended 60 minutes of daily exercise. According to Elio Antunes, President of ParticipACTION, less than 9% of children and youth are sufficiently active, and the proportion of active kids decreases with age.

The committee was told that only 7% of 5-11 years olds meet the physical activity guidelines and this proportion drops to only 4% for adolescents.

With respect to the sedentary guidelines, the committee heard that less than 15% of 3-4 year olds and only 24% of 5-17 year olds are meeting the recommendations.

In fact, members were told that children and youth are spending 38 to 42 hours per week in front of television, desktops, laptops, ipads and smartphones.

In short:While we think we have increased our rates of physical activity via structured exercise (sports leagues, gym memberships, personal trainers, etc), we haven’t….our rates of daily physical activity continue to drop while our rates of sitting on our butts staring at screens have continued to rise.

To make it even worse, we are setting up our kids to be even lazier than we are.

So….what are we going to do about it???

In the discussions of what we can do to reverse the trend of obesity in Canada, participants kept coming back to Canada’s anti-smoking strategy.

Despite the obvious distinction that smoking is a completely unnecessary practice while eating is essential, witnesses noted several lessons that we have learned from the anti-smoking campaign:

the anti-smoking strategy employed several different approaches implemented by different levels of government.

the evidence-base of the negative health consequences had to be elucidated and presented clearly to Canadians.

the strategy had to bring about a societal change in terms of how smoking was viewed.

the change in behaviour would take time.

the strategy would not be popular with the industry.

and finally, the federal government provided the leadership for a pan-Canadian approach.

In their comparison of the anti-smoking strategy to any anti-obesity strategy, witnesses continued to emphasize the need for a comprehensive, health-in-all-policies, whole-of-society approach.

The committee was told that policies, wherever possible, should encourage or facilitate the pursuit of healthy lifestyles. In this regard, witnesses suggested that a health lens, should be applied to a range of policy development, across departments and across all levels of government. An effective all-of government platform would encourage the development of provincial and regional initiatives that promote healthy lifestyles. As such, the committee would like to see the federal government take aggressive measures to help Canadians achieve and maintain healthy weights.

In short: While Canada’s successful anti-smoking strategy can serve as an effective model, we have to remember that obesity is a much more complex problem and as such requires a more comprehensive solution.

In that spirit, the “Obesity in Canada” Committee has come up with 21 suggestions for reversing Canada’s obesity problem.

Here’s the list….

Recommendation 1

The committee recommends that the federal government, in partnership with the provinces and territories and in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, create and implement a National Campaign to Combat Obesity which includes goals, timelines and annual progress reports.

@healthhabits says:This is exactly the kind of thing government should be good at. Bringing all sorts of disparate stakeholders together to work together towards a common goal. IMHO, this is a necessary step.

Recommendation 2

The committee recommends that the federal government:

Immediately conduct a thorough assessment of the prohibition on advertising food to children in Quebec; and,

Design and implement a prohibition on the advertising of foods and beverages to children based on that assessment.

@healthhabits says:Quebec has had a prohibition on the advertising of all food and beverages to children under the age of 13 under its Consumer Protection Act11 for many years. Studying the effectiveness of this program to determine if it should be rolled out nationwide makes sense to me.

Recommendation 3

The committee recommends that the federal government:

Assess the options for taxation levers with a view to implementing a new tax on sugar-sweetened as well as artificially-sweetened beverages; and,

Conduct a study, and report back to this committee by December 2016, on potential means of increasing the affordability of healthy foods including, but not limited to, the role of marketing boards, food subsidies and the removal or reduction of existing taxes.

@healthhabits says:Skip the study and just go ahead and slap a tax on sugar-sweetened as well as artificially-sweetened beverages AND take ALL of that money and use it to subsidize un-processed (aka real) food

Recommendation 4

The committee further recommends that the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada immediately:

Address the recommendations made by the Auditor General with respect to the Nutrition North program and report back to this committee on its progress by December 2016

@healthhabits says:Northern communities are much worse off in terms of overall nutrition and the cost of nutritious food in particular. Canada’s north is one giant food desert. As such, it may require special (aka expensive) intervention.

Recommendation 5

The committee further recommends that the federal government conduct assessments of the Children’s Fitness Tax Credit, the Working Income Tax Benefit and the Universal Child Care Benefit with a view to determining how fiscal measures could be used to help Canadians of lower socio-economic status, including our Aboriginal population, choose healthy lifestyle options.

@healthhabits says:Skip the assessment, ditch the tax credits. They are designed to reward the well off & ignore the poor…which is just plain stupid as the poor are the ones driving Canada’s obesity epidemic. If we want to save healthcare & improve economic productivity, any physical activity incentives need to be directed primarily at the poor & secondarily at more affluent Canadians.

Recommendation 6

The committee recommends that the Minister of Health immediately undertake a complete revision of Canada’s food guide in order that it better reflect the current state of scientific evidence. The revised food guide must:

Make strong statements about restricting consumption of highly processed foods.

@healthhabits says:All of these four recommendations sound great.

Recommendation 7

The committee further recommends that the Minister of Health revise the food guide on the guidance of an advisory body which:

Comprises experts in relevant areas of study, including but not limited to nutrition, medicine, metabolism, biochemistry, and biology; and,

Does not include representatives of the food or agriculture industries.

@healthhabits says:Agree 100%. Economic bias should not be allowed in Canada’s Food Guide…even if food lobbyists support an MPs re-election campaign.

Recommendation 8

The committee therefore recommends that the Minister of Health prohibit the use of partially hydrogenated oils, to minimize trans fat content in food, unless specifically permitted by regulation.

@healthhabits says:Agree 100%

Recommendation 9

The committee further recommends that the Minister of Health:

Reassess the daily value applied to total carbohydrates based on emerging evidence regarding dietary fat and the fat promoting nature of carbohydrates;

Ensure that the regulatory proposals for serving size have addressed all of the concerns raised by stakeholders during public consultation, and,

Require that the daily intake value for protein be included in the Nutrition Facts table.

@healthhabits says:Every few years, nutrition experts flip-flop their positions on the relative healthfullness of the different macronutrients. One decade, we are supposed to avoid fat…then it’s carbs…then it’s “too much” protein, then we’re back to fats…and so on…

My suggestion is to avoid making blanket statements on the healthfullness (or lack thereof) of any macronutrient.

There is nothing wrong with eating fat or carbs or protein.

The problems start when people:

start eating excessive quantities of overall calories

demonize a single macronutrient and replace it with a highly-processed substitution

With all of this said, I think that the consumer needs as much info about the quality of the food they are eating AND the gov’t can help them by requiring a total nutritional profile of every food product be made available on the company’s website

Recommendation 10

The committee further recommends that the Minister of Health assess whether sugar and starch should be combined under the heading of total carbohydrate within the Nutrition Facts table and report back to this committee by December 2016.

Recommendation 11

The committee therefore recommends that the Minister of Health implement strict limits on the use of permitted health claims and nutrient content claims based on a measure of a food’s energy density relative to its total nutrient content.

@healthhabits says:Agree 100%. I would also require any nutritional claims require scientific proof. Links to that science should be available from the products page on the company website. Make a claim…back it up.

Recommendation 12

The committee therefore recommends that the Minister of Health:

Immediately undertake a review of front-of-package labelling approaches that have been developed in other jurisdictions and identify the most effective one;

Report back to this committee on the results of the review by December 2016;

Amend the food regulations to mandate the use of the identified front-of-package approach on those foods that are required to display a Nutrition Facts table; and,

Encourage the use of this labelling scheme by food retailers and food service establishments on items not required to display a Nutrition Facts table.

@healthhabits says:If you sell food in a package, you should be required to have a Nutrition Facts table as part of the packaging. As well, a website url pointing to a page with more complete nutrition info about the product should be included as well.

Recommendation 13

The committee therefore recommends that the Minister of Health encourage nutrition labelling on menus and menu boards in food service establishments.

@healthhabits says:This is a little vague. How about something more specific like…calories, macronutrients, allergens listed in small print on the menu AND a more thorough nutritional analysis for each item on a separate booklet…and on their website as well.

Recommendation 14

The committee therefore recommends that the federal government increase funding to ParticipACTION to a level sufficient for the organization to:

Proceed with Active Canada 20/20; and

Become the national voice for Canada’s physical activity messaging.

@healthhabits says:Based upon what I have seen from ParticipACTION in the past few years, I am not sure if giving them more money is the best idea.

It may be simpler and more effective for Health Canada to hire the same PR flacks that put together Canada’s anti-smoking campaign and get them to focus on a “exercise more : play more : move more” style of message.

I’m not sure why we need ParticipACTION’s added layer of bureaucracy.

Why not…

hold a public contest for ad/pr/marketing firms to come up with their best message to get Canadian’s active again

have Canadians vote via the contest’s website/FB page/Twitter/etc

award the winner the contract

promote the heck out of the programs via internet, tv, radio and print.

And while we’re at it, why don’t we throw out a request to Canadian celebrities & athletes asking them to donate their time to film some short PSAs to add to the Health Canada Youtube channel.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about the fine folks who work for ParticipACTION. They may have exactly the kind of expertise to organize the kind of program needed to get Canadians active again.

Recommendation 15

The committee further recommends that the Minister of Health and the Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities together use the recently established National Health and Fitness Day to promote the Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines.

@healthhabits says:I didn’t even know there was a National Health & Fitness Day. I guess that’s why they need the promotion.

Recommendation 16

The committee further recommends that the Public Health Agency of Canada provide sustained or bridged funding for pilot projects that have been assessed as effective.

@healthhabits says:Hmmmmmmm who’s making the assessments? And what happens when they haven’t be PROVEN effective after a year or two of government $$$$ in their bank accounts?

Recommendation 17

The committee further recommends that the Minister of Health in discussion with provincial and territorial counterparts as well as non-governmental organizations already engaged in these initiatives:

Encourage improved training for physicians regarding diet and physical activity; • Promote the use of physician counselling, including the use of prescriptions for exercise;

Bridge the gap between exercise professionals and the medical community by preparing and promoting qualified exercise professionals as a valuable part of the healthcare system and healthcare team;

@healthhabits says:All of the suggestions sound great…and yet they are couched in the kind of government bureaucracy speak that makes me lose all confidence. Can we please get a little less talk about what we want to do and a little more talk about how we’re going to do it!!!

Recommendation 18

The committee further recommends that the federal government provide funding under the New Building Canada Fund to communities for infrastructure that enables, facilitates and encourages an active lifestyle, both indoors and outdoors.

@healthhabits says:If that means more walking paths, more bike paths and more walkable neighbourhoods…I am on board. If that means funding for arenas & pools…I have to disagree. We need to keep a focus on the cost : benefit ratio. Tax dollars don’t grow on trees.

Recommendation 19

The committee therefore recommends that the Public Health Agency of Canada implement a strategy to increase the visibility, uptake and use of the Best Practices Portal by stakeholders across the country.

@healthhabits says:Never heard of the Best Practices Portal. At first glance, it seems a little meh, but the idea is solid. Give Canada’s docs a dedicated site to source info on reducing obesity & related diseases seems like a great idea.

Recommendation 20

The committee therefore recommends that Health Canada design and implement a public awareness campaign on healthy eating based on tested, simple messaging. These messages should relate to, but not be limited to:

Most of the healthiest food doesn’t require a label;

Meal preparation and enjoyment;

Reduced consumption of processed foods; and,

The link between poor diet and chronic disease.

@healthhabits says:See my comments on funding ParticipACTION above. We don’t need multiple groups coming up with different public awareness campaigns. Have a contest, using the Canadian people as judges, ask Canadian celebrities & athletes for assistance

As well, bring back Home Ec in school.

Recommendation 21

The committee further recommends that Health Canada and other relevant departments and agencies, together with existing expertise and trusted organizations, implement a comprehensive public awareness campaign on healthy active lifestyles.

@healthhabits says:See above….physical activity, diet and healthy active lifestyles should all be promoted AT THE SAME TIME.

Back in the “olden days”, tobacco companies created marketing campaigns like this…

…and this…

…and this…

…in an attempt to make their product seem healthy, family-friendly and to CAPTURE THE YOUTH MARKET.

Because they knew that:

Kids are more susceptible to marketing than adults

People who start smoking as kids are likely to be life-long smokers

Targeting children is the most effective business strategy

“Younger adults are the only sources of replacement smokers” – RJ Reynolds, 1984

“Today’s teenager is tomorrow’s potential regular customer, and the overwhelming majority of smokers first begin to smoke while still in their teens… The smoking patterns of teenagers are particularly important to Philip Morris.” – Philip Morris 1981

“The ability to attract new smokers and develop them into a young adult franchise is key to brand development.” – 1999 Philip Morris report

“They got lips? We want them.” – Reply of an RJ Reynolds representative when asked the age of the kids they were targeting

But of course, that happened way back in the olden days, before we got smart and told tobacco companies to stop giving our kids cancer. Nowadays, we would never let an industry knowingly make profits by making our kids sick….would we?

And IMHO, that’s because children are children and lack the awareness & experience to resist the siren call of Madison Ave mind control.

According to lead researcher Dr Emma Boyland : “Through our analysis of these published studies I have shown that food advertising doesn’t just affect brand preference – it drives consumption. Given that almost all children in Westernised societies are exposed to large amounts of unhealthy food advertising on a daily basis this is a real concern.

“Small, but cumulative increases in energy intake have resulted in the current global childhood obesity epidemic and food marketing plays a critical role in this. We have also shown that the effects are not confined to TV advertising; online marketing by food and beverage brands is now well established and has a similar impact.

“On the basis of these findings, recommendations for enacting environmental strategies and policy options to reduce children’s exposure to food advertising are evidence-based and warranted.”

Health Effects of Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity has both immediate and long-term effects on health and well-being.

Immediate health effects:

Obese youth are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. In a population-based sample of 5- to 17-year-olds, 70% of obese youth had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Obese adolescents are more likely to have prediabetes, a condition in which blood glucose levels indicate a high risk for development of diabetes.

Children and adolescents who are obese are at greater risk for bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem.

Long-term health effects:

Children and adolescents who are obese are likely to be obese as adults and are therefore more at risk for adult health problems such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.6 One study showed that children who became obese as early as age 2 were more likely to be obese as adults.

Overweight and obesity are associated with increased risk for many types of cancer, including cancer of the breast, colon, endometrium, esophagus, kidney, pancreas, gall bladder, thyroid, ovary, cervix, and prostate, as well as multiple myeloma and Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

What does this mean to you?

Advertisers used to market tobacco to children

When enough parents were convinced that tobacco was bad for their kids, they demanded (via gov’t) that advertising tobacco to kids be stopped immediately.

Today, advertisers market processed junk food to children

Some of us (me, you, World Health Organization, CDC, American Psychological Association, etc) are convinced that (1) processed junk food is bad for our kids and (2) our kids are susceptible to junk food advertising.

Unfortunately, not enough parents are convinced…and until they are, their kids are at a higher risk of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer, osteoarthritis, and many types of cancer including cancer of the breast, colon, endometrium, esophagus, kidney, pancreas, gall bladder, thyroid, ovary, cervix, and prostate, as well as multiple myeloma and Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

What can we do?

Thanks to the wonders of social media & the interweb, all you need to do is share this article on Facebook and Twitter.

All we need is one@KimKardashianretweet and those corporate childhood obesity peddlers are screwed 🙂

Around the world, 41 million children under the age of 5 are obese or overweight according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And since 1990, the number of obese or overweight children around the world has grown by 10,000,000.

As if that wasn’t bad enough….the majority of that expansion has happened in developing countries…countries with fewer financial resources to help reverse this trend.

Why is this happening?

According to the WHO, the explosion in obesity rates of childhood obesity in developing countries is due to globalization and urbanization.

Or in other words…we took one of the crappiest parts of our society and spread it all around the world. Yay us.

Specifically, the WHO identifies the marketing & consumption of processed food and drinks factor responsible for the increase in global childhood obesity.

The report said that the global childhood obesity epidemic had the potential to reverse many recent health gains made across the globe and called on governments to address what it called a major health challenge.

“WHO needs to work with governments to implement a wide range of measures that address the environmental causes of obesity and overweight, and help give children the healthy start to life they deserve,” said Peter Gluckman, ECHO co-chair.

Among its recommendations, the WHO said governments should:

promote healthy foods,

promote increased physical activity and

promote healthy school environments

WHO Conclusions

The greatest obstacle to effective progress on reducing childhood obesity is a lack of political commitment and a failure of governments and other actors to take ownership, leadership and necessary actions.

Governments must invest in robust monitoring and accountability systems to track the prevalence of childhood obesity. These systems are vital in providing data for policy development and in offering evidence of the impact and effectiveness of interventions.

The Commission would like to stress the importance and necessity of tackling the complex issue of childhood obesity. WHO, international organizations and their Member States, as well as non-State actors, all have a critical role to play in harnessing momentum and ensuring that all sectors remain committed to working together to reach a positive conclusion.

My Conclusions

The WHO has identified a series global health issue, but like the carpenter who thinks that the solution to every problem is a hammer and a nail, the WHO is suffering from a great big case of confirmation bias.

While I agree that all the groups listed above have a responsibility to do their part in reducing global childhood obesity, the WHO neglects to hold PARENTS responsible for their part in this cluster-fudge.

As the father of an almost-one-year-old baby girl, I am royally pissed off that she will be inundated with messages 24-7 that the consumption of junk food is essential to living a happy life full of fun & friendship.

And I’m also not happy that quasi-governmental bodies allow industry to help develop the official government endorsed “health-eating plans.”

And don’t even get me started on CEOs that put short-term bumps in share price over the health of the children who consume their food products. Companies are made up of people…and if those people don’t care about my kid, I have no problems using social media to publicly shame them and encourage parents to make healthier choices.

Okay…that’s enough ranting for today.

If you can spare 5 seconds, please RT or share this article via Facebook

Researchers at the University of Texas – MD Anderson Cancer Center have found an alarming link between high amounts of dietary sugar and an increased risk of breast cancer and metastasis to the lungs.

And we’re not talking crazy-no-one-would-ever-eat-that-much-sugar levels of sugar consumption

In the study, the researchers found that lab mice who ate sucrose (table sugar) comparable to levels of the typical Western diet showed increased tumor growth and metastasis.

Previous research have shown this link between dietary sugar consumption and breast cancer development…with inflammation thought to be the cause.

In this new study, the researchers were able to identify sugar’s effect on enzymatic signaling pathway known as 12-LOX and a related fatty-acid called 12-HETE which is causing the cancer growth.

“The current study investigated the impact of dietary sugar on mammary gland tumor development in multiple mouse models, along with mechanisms that may be involved,” said co-author Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., professor of Palliative, Rehabilitation, and Integrative Medicine. “We determined that it was specifically fructose, in table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, ubiquitous within our food system, which was responsible for facilitating lung metastasis and 12-HETE production in breast tumors.”

Cohen added that the data suggested that dietary sugar induces 12-LOX signaling to increase risks for breast cancer development and metastasis.

What does this mean to you?

This science is brand new, so there is no need to freak out and ban all sugar from your home.

They crunched all that data to arrive at a series of environmental impact scores (energy, blue water, GHG) per kcal for each food.

From there, they calculated the overall energy, blue water & GHG scores for each of the three diets

Their findings?

Dietary Recommendation #1 resulted in a decrease in energy use, blue water footprint and GG emissions by approximately 9%.

Which makes sense…2000 calories of pizza is going to use less energy than 3000 calories of pizza.

Dietary Recommendation #2 increased energy use by 43%, increased blue water footprint by 16% and increased GHG emissions by 9%

The data showed that eating more fruits, vegetables, dairy & seafood bumped up the global footprint because of their relatively higher resource use and emissions per Calorie.

Even when the researchers dropped the caloric intake of the healthy food for Dietary Recommendation #3, they still saw an increase in energy use of 38%, an increase in blue water footprint of 10% and an increase in GHG emissions of 6%

And that’s where we get our headline…“Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon”

Even if you starve yourself on healthy food, you are harming the environment more than if you ate the standard American diet of grains & processed food.

This can’t be true, can it?

Yup…it’s true. But here’s why.

Our current food production system is geared towards producing the food most of us eat…processed grains and cheap fats & protein.

We are incredibly efficient at producing crap food.

From farm to table, our mainstream food infrastructure is an amazing artificial organism.

Conversely, our infrastructure for healthy food is a joke in comparison. Small-scale healthy food producers give us amazing foodstuffs, but at a per-unit cost (financial & environmental) far in excess of their mainstream competitors.

If our healthy food producers had the infrastructure of our less-than-healthy food producers, they would match them for price & crush them in terms of environmental impact.

But they don’t and as a result, we are left comparing apples & oranges.

In April 2012, Silver DIner, a full-service family restaurant chain with 15 locations in Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey, made three major changes to its children’s menu in order to make healthier items easier to choose.

Meals were re-designed to meet or exceed nutrition standards set by the National Restaurant Association’s Kids LiveWell program (59%, compared to 22% before the changes).

Healthy side dishes became the default choice – strawberries, mixed vegetables, or side salads–were automatically included with all kids’ meals by default.

And less-healthy choices such as french fries, soda and lemonade were removed from the menu.

NOTE:Fries and soda were still available…upon request.

What Happened Next?

Children’s meal prices increased by $0.79 for breakfasts and $0.19 for non-breakfast meals.

Conclusions

Kids will eat healthier restaurant meals when menus are designed correctly,

Chain restaurants can increase profits by making their menus healthier

Where do we go from here?

If I was a restaurant owner, I would consider taking a look at the Silver Diner kids menu and use it as a template for re-working my own kids menu

If I was a restaurant owner, I would consider applying the same menu format for the main menu as well

As a parent, I am going to send a link to this article to the restaurants I frequent most often. The number of obese children in our society is truly horrendous and we all need to pitch in to reverse this trend.

Please Help

Most people will never hear about this article, this research, this restaurant.

Last Friday, California’s State Senate Appropriations Committee voted (5-2) to pass a measure requiring distributors of bottled or canned sugary drinks to put a warning label on their beverage container.

SB1000 would require a warning label to be placed on the front of all beverage containers with added sweeteners that have 75 or more calories in every 12 ounces.

Not too surprisingly, America’s soda pop producers were not amused. The California Beverage Association issued the following statement.

“We agree that obesity is a serious and complex issue,” the group said in a statement, calling the proposed bill “misleading” claiming that “just 6 percent of calories in the average American’s diet come from soda, fruit, sports and energy drinks, compared with 11 percent in sweets and deserts. Moreover, it said most calories are consumed in the form of fats, oils and starches in food”.

SB1000 requires a majority vote of the full Senate before it can become law. That vote is scheduled to occur in the next two weeks. In the meantime…

Supporters of the bill (California Medical Association, California Center for Public Health Advocacy, the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, the California Black Health Network and supporting Senators) will issue public statements supporting the bill and it’s health & financial benefits.

Critics of the bill (California Beverage Association) will defend their position on health promotion, question the effectiveness of warning labels and raise the issue of potential job losses due to the cost associated with placing warning labels on their products.

Will the Bill become Law?

Who knows? Going up against the processed food industry is no easy task. Pepsico and Coca Cola have lobbied and defeated previous labelling and “soda tax” bills in states across the nation.

Still, proponents of the bill are hopeful. California’s Democrats hold a super-majority in the Legislature and are traditionally more supportive of this type of motion.

Will the Warning Labels Have Any Effect?

Once again…who knows?

In a recent study, researchers concluded that if the USA had adopted cigarette package warning labels in 2012 (when Canada enacted tobacco labelling legislation), the number of adult smokers in the USA would have decreased by 5.3–8.6 million by 2013….meaning that there would have been 5.3–8.6 million Americans with a reduced chance of dying from lung cancer.

Health warnings on cigarette packages saved lives in Canada and would have saved lives in the U.S. of A. And that sounds like a pretty darn good return on investment.

So….is it really such a jump in logic to assume that health warnings on sugary drinks would also reduce consumption of said sugary drinks…thereby improving American rates of insulin resistance, obesity, hypertension, heart disease, cancer???

In the United States, tobacco, alcohol and diet cause more than 1.2 million annual premature deaths from heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and other conditions.

Chronic diseases account for $3 of every $4 spent on healthcare—about $1.5 trillion annually in the US of A.

So, how is it, that with all of this available data, the US spends less than 10% of total healthcare funding on health promotion / disease prevention?

Is it because public health campaigns don’t work?

Nope….while cases of diabetes have increased 176% in the last 30 years, it is estimated that 8 million ‘premature deaths’ have been prevented thanks to anti-smoking PSAs combined with increased taxes on tobacco products.

Public health campaigns can work…if they are well designed, well funded and receive government support.

The United States of America spends more money on healthcare than any other country in the world. And yet, Americans have a lower life expectancy and higher rates of disease and injury than almost all other high-income countries.

How is it possible that Americans are living shorter lives with poorer health than the rest of the “rich” countries???

And why is it happening?

The Data

When compared with the average for peer countries, the United States fares worse in nine health domains:

1. Adverse birth outcomes

For decades, the United States has experienced the highest infant mortality rate of high-income countries and also ranks poorly on other birth outcomes, such as low birth weight. American children are less likely to live to age 5 than children in other high-income countries.

Infant mortality

How is it possible that almost 3x as many babies die in the US than in Sweden?

2. Injuries and homicides

Deaths from motor vehicle crashes, non-transportation-related injuries, and violence occur at much higher rates in the United States than in other countries and are a leading cause of death in children, adolescents, and young adults. Since the 1950s, U.S. adolescents and young adults have died at higher rates from traffic accidents and homicide than their counterparts in other countries.

Deaths from traffic accidents

Violent deaths

Hmmmmm, American boys dying violent deaths…I wonder what could be causing that?

3. Adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections

Since the 1990s, among high-income countries, U.S. adolescents have had the highest rate of pregnancies and are more likely to acquire sexually transmitted infections.

Adolescent birth rate

The boys are dying violent deaths, the girls are getting knocked up and everyone is getting sexually transmitted infections. Well done.

4. HIV and AIDS

The United States has the second highest prevalence of HIV infection among the 17 peer countries and the highest incidence of AIDS.

No surprise considering the high rate of sexually transmitted infections.

5. Drug-related mortality

Americans lose more years of life to alcohol and other drugs than people in peer countries, even when deaths from drunk driving are excluded.

This might explain all the pregnancies and STIs.

6. Obesity and diabetes

For decades, the United States has had the highest obesity rate among high-income countries. High prevalence rates for obesity are seen in U.S. children and in every age group thereafter. From age 20 onward, U.S. adults have among the highest prevalence rates of diabetes (and high plasma glucose levels) among peer countries.

Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and a whole bunch more lifestyle related medical conditions are driving America’s medical costs up and up year after year.

7. Heart disease

The U.S. death rate from ischemic heart disease is the second highest among the 17 peer countries. Americans reach age 50 with a less favorable cardiovascular risk profile than their peers in Europe, and adults over age 50 are more likely to develop and die from cardiovascular disease than are older adults in other high-income countries.

Hmmmmmmm, the home of McDonalds and Coca-Cola has the second highest rate of ischemic heart disease amongst their peer countries. Quel surprise.

8. Chronic lung disease

Lung disease is more prevalent and associated with higher mortality in the United States than in the United Kingdom and other European countries.

9. Disability

Older U.S. adults report a higher prevalence of arthritis and activity limitations than their counterparts in the United Kingdom, other European countries, and Japan.

NOTE #1 – Looking at all of these problems which cause Americans to live shorter lives with poorer health than the rest of the world’s “rich” countries, I keep seeing the same root problem. POOR LIFESTYLE CHOICES

In California, there is a ballot initiative – officially known as Proposition 37 – which is coming up for vote on November 6.

Proposition 37 will require labeling of genetically engineered / modified foods, and end the routine industry practice of labeling and marketing such foods as “natural.”

[box type=”important”]If there are GMOs in your food, companies will have to make this clear on their packaging.[/box]

Unfortunately, not all of America’s food producers want you to know if there are GMOs in your food. And from a financial standpoint, I can understand why companies like Monsanto are trying to block Prop 37. They have a lot of money invested in producing GMOs and they don’t want the public’s negative opinion of GMOs to hurt their profits.

What really pisses me off is when I find out that America’s major health food brands…

Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has picked a fight with America’s food industry.

In an article commissioned for the PLoS Medicine series on Big Food, Brownell said that working collaboratively with the food industry to improve America’s health is a mistake and a trap. Like other industries, Big Food has an obligation to it’s shareholders to sell more products and make more money irrespective of the impact upon consumers.

“Government, foundations, and other powerful institutions should be working for regulation, not collaboration”.

Brownell believes that:

Big Food is attempting to improve their image by making small contributions to public health (donations, public-private partnerships, “healthy eating” campaigns, etc) while “it fights viciously against meaningful change (such as limits on marketing, taxes on products such as sugared beverages, and regulation of nutritional labeling)”.

For example, the soft drink industry gave the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia a US$10 million gift at the same time that the city of Philadelphia was considering a soda tax. “Such public-sector interaction with industry could be predicted to undermine public health goals and protect industry interests”.

When industry can’t be trusted to do the “right thing” the American government has a responsibility to step in and regulate change

He cites 3 historical examples.

Tobacco industry regulation

The elimination of financial regulation that led to the sub-prime meltdown and resultant global recession.

Automotive industry regulation – seat belts, airbags, etc

Brownell believes that without government intervention/regulation, the food industry’s drive for increasing profits will lead to a continuing increasing of American obesity and a continuing degradation of American health.

So….what sayest thou?

Does Big Food need to be regulated?

If so, how?

If not, why?

And if you say that government regulation/oversight is a form of socialism, you will also need to explain to me why we have public military, fire departments & police departments.

Back in the olden days (the 1980s), me and my friends would race home from school, dump our schoolbags in our rooms, shove some leftovers down our gullets and run back outside to play road hockey (or baseball, football, etc) until…

it became too dark to see

or our Moms dragged us back inside for dinner & homework

Fast forward to 2012…

46% of Canadian kids get 3 hours or less of active play per week

Only 35% of Canadian kids walk or ride their bikes to school

The average Canadian kid gets 7 hours and 48 minutes of screen time every day

As a result, Canadian kids spend 63% of their free time being sedentary

And they’re even less active on weekends than on school days

And according to Active Healthy Kids Canada, “two of the major barriers to regular, active play in Canadian kids are screen time and parental safety concerns. In combination, these societal realities force children and youth into highly-controlled environments, where they have little opportunity to let loose and just play“.

Play…like we all did back in the good old days…before the world became a scary place and we needed to start bubble-wrapping our kids to keep them safe.

Fifty-eight per cent of Canadian parents say they are very concerned about keeping their children safe and feel they “have to be over-protective of them in this world.” Safety concerns, whether or not they are founded, such as crime, traffic, neighbourhood danger, outdoor darkness and lack of supervision, discourage parents from letting their children and teens play outdoors.

And as a result, our precious little bundles of joy are fat and borderline diabetic.

Note – While this data is Canadian, I’m willing to bet that it isn’t unique to Canada.

Advertisers would be free to continue to market to everyone over the age of 13

Childhood obesity is a growing problem around the world

Junk food is called junk food for a reason – it’s junk. And it contributes to making our kids fat, diabetic & lazy.

We already ban advertisers from targeting children from cigarette & alcohol.

Obviously, the biggest argument against this act is going to be the cry of “Nanny State”.

And while I agree that government at all levels need to be reminded periodically that their job is to serve the public and not attempt to control or re-engineer the public, we should also remember that the job of advertisers, marketers and manufacturers is to sell products & services to the public.

They have no responsibility to care for the health of our kids.

That’s the job of family.

And when Ontario’s families wanted to stop advertisers from targeting their kids with ads for booze & smokes, they used government legislation to ban the practice.

In this latest study, scientists from the University of maryland looked at the common FTO (fat mass and obesity associated) gene variants that have recently been associated with high Body Mass Index (BMI) and obesity in several large studies.

Specifically, they investigated the effect that physical activity can have in those people born with the FTO gene variant.

The Study

Their day to day activities provide a high level of physical exercise. This is due to the fact that the Amish don’t drive cars or have electricity in their homes, eschewing many of the trappings of modern life. Most Amish men are farmers or work in physically demanding occupations such as blacksmithing or carpentry. Women are homemakers who work without the aid of modern appliances and often care for many children.

The researchers tested the particpants for:

The presence of the FTO gene variant

Their BMI scores

Their levels of physical activity

The participants’ activity levels were measured with the aid of accelerometers, worn on the participants’ hips.

The researchers gathered measurements of their physical activity over seven consecutive days.

Participants were classified as “high activity” or “low activity” depending upon their accelerometer readings.

The “high activity” group burned 900 more calories per day than the “low activity” group. This total translates into 3 to 4 hours of moderate intensity activity, such as brisk walking, housecleaning or gardening.

The Results

The researchers found that the Amish people with the FTO variant were no more likely to be overweight than their non-FTO carrying cousins….as long as they got their three to four hours of moderate activity every day.

Conclusion

Genetics isn’t Destiny

Being born with a FTO gene variant does not guarantee a lifetime of obesity and diabetes. Your health and physical appearance is up to you and the lifestyle choices you make.

Researchers at Albert Einstein College found that despite their weight, nearly a third of obese people are not at high risk of diabetes or heart disease.

OK, not exactly a ringing endorsement in favor of obesity, but how about this…

A recent German study found that for normal and overweight people, excess belly fat is a strong link to heart disease and diabetes. However, for their obese cousins, belly fat is not such a big deal. For the obese, a fatty liver is a more accurate risk factor.

According to this study, obese people who get at least moderate physical exercise tend to have less fatty livers.

OK, here we go.

Fit and fat!

According to Dr. Wylie-Rosett (Albert Einstein College): “In our study, the obese people with better risk profiles tended to have more physical activity. And the normal-weight people with worse risk factors tended to have characteristics associated with lower physical activity levels.”

Alright, now we’re getting somewhere.

Maybe it is possible for obese people to be fit.

Maybe fitness is more than having a six-pack.

Beer belly….Six pack???

Maybe fitness means not having visceral fat around your internal organs, improving insulin sensitivity, having a healthy blood pressure, along with well developed aerobic and anaerobic energy systems.

How about we throw in some quality of life factors like enough muscular strength and balance to go about your daily activities without the aid of an electric scooter.

Conclusion

So what is it?

Can you be fit and fat?

My answer:

Yes…in theory. It is possible to carry excess fat and still be healthy as a result of a complete fitness program.

No…in reality. While there is a slim minority of people who gain excess fat due to a medical condition, the vast majority of obese people are obese as a result of their lifestyle. They eat too much and move too little. Until they change these habits, the resultant obesity will have a negative impact upon their health.

But wait, isn’t the government taking steps to reverse the growth of childhood obesity….and spending big-time government money to do it?

“The Centers for Disease Control’s current annual budget for nutrition, physical activity, and obesity is about $41 million for Americans of all ages. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Team Nutrition, whose goal is to improve children’s eating and physical-activity habits, has an annual budget of about $10 million“.

$51 million?

That’s it?

Let’s recap:

$867,761,000 per year spent on marketing carbonated beverages, breakfast cereals and snack foods to your kids.

T – To avoid ‘accidentally’ missing a workout, you should arrange a specific exercise appointment in your daily calendar.

Stimulus or Cues

Establish physical reminders to encourage yourself to exercise – Pack your gym bag and leave it by the front door every night, leave yourself notes encouraging yourself to work out, schedule your workout into your electronic schedule with an alarm, ask friends or family to call and remind you…really any reminder will help.

Self Monitoring

Keep a workout and/or food log book. It’s tough at first, but it pays off in the end.

Feedback

Reward yourself with a non-food based treat when you succeed. The rewards should become larger / more important to match the degree of fitness success.

Successfully completing today’s workout deserves a small treat, but not missing a workout for 3 months deserves a really big pat on the back.

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In a move that will probably cross the pond, the British government is actually paying it’s citizens to lose weight.

The governments Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives strategy consists of a series of projects run through the Well@Work scheme. This program, led by the British Heart Foundation offers rewards for workers who lose weight. One competition, called The Biggest Loser, awarded £130 ($260 approx.) in gift vouchers for the participant who lost the most weight.

The Government is investing £372 million ($725 million USD approx.) over three years to implement the strategy.

Sadly, a recent analysis of nine research studies which used financial incentives found there was no effect on weight after 12 months. Aberdeen University’s Health Services Research Unit said eating more fruit and vegetables was more effective than paying for weight loss.

However, Dr Ian Campbell, the medical director of Weight Concern, said work-based incentive schemes were a “win win” because the employer benefited from a workforce that was less likely to take time off sick, while employees improved their health. He said: “It might sound a bit desperate but we are desperate so we have to look at all these things.”

Another program for UK nurses (being run by American health care company Humana) “offers pedometers, access to personal trainers and vouchers for high street retailers as incentives to slim down. The scheme involves health information, motivational talks from health coaches and participants can upload data from their pedometers onto a computer to chart their progress”.

Humana spokesman Lee Phillips said: “This is the first time in the country we have got a programme like this running for hospital staff.

“The trust see this as being in line with the Government’s emphasis on health and wellness in the workplace and I think this will really take off with a lot of people – it is all about making people aware of their health.”

What the heck is going on in the South Pacific? Those are some crazy obesity stats.

What about the money?

In a report issued by Credit Suisse, analysts said “The global obesity “epidemic” will have a material impact on global business strategy over the next decade. A greater awareness about its costs is not only changing society but infiltrating the business world in health care and other major industries”.

In English, “the larger a problem gets, the more attention and resources it gets”

Credit Suisse claims that the “companies best placed to benefit from the development are those devising products that either help people to lead healthier lives or that treat the symptoms of obesity”.

So who are these companies best placed to capitalize on our expanding waistlines?

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Credit Suisse has assembled an index of 15 stocks that they feel will “experience outsized revenue and earnings growth over the next 5 years compared to their peers.”

This “Healthier Living 15″ includes:

Health Care:

Allergan sells a “Lap-Band” used in an increasingly popular type of obesity surgery.

Food:

If you want a wild card, go for Kuala Lumpur Kepong, a Malaysian palm-oil company that may see an uptick in business as food makers look for alternatives to trans fats

Athletics:

Under Armour sells athletic clothing and shoes

Lululemon athletica sells “yoga-inspired apparel”

Nike is Nike

Dick’s Sporting Goods is a big U.S. retailer

Life Time Fitness, a chain of health clubs, could outcompete smaller gyms to gain market share.

So what does this mean to me?

If you are looking for a growth market to invest your life savings in, the obesity industry might a good idea. Think about it. People are getting fatter and fatter with no end in sight.

For years, authors have promised miracle diets while drug and supplement companies have given us miracle pills. And yet, we get fatter and fatter.

So, we have a marketplace that is eager to believe in miracle solutions and apparently never becomes disillusioned when they don’t work. The dieters, pill poppers and frantic exercisers just blame themselves, their poor genetics, their lack of self-discipline….and hop right back into their SUV, drive down to the mall and pick up the latest best selling diet book and wash it down with a triple Venti half-caf mocha caramel frappuchino with extra whipped cream and a dollop of irony.

As reported in the Daily Telegraph, British politician David Cameron openly declared war on the “culture of moral neutrality” by “calling on the obese, the idle and even the poor to accept some responsibility for their plight.” (see video here)

Going further, Cameron says that “Britain risks creating a society where nobody is prepared to tell the truth about what is good and bad, right and wrong… Society has become far too sensitive to people’s feelings with no one prepared to say what needs to be said…. Instead, we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong.”

About obesity in particular, Cameron said “We talk about people being at risk of obesity instead of people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty or social exclusion. It’s as if these things – obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction – are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.”

He went on to speak about personal responsibility – “We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, and of deferring gratification instead of instant gratification.”

Wow, strong words indeed. I can only imagine the nasty emails in his Inbox after this went public.

If the comments from this blog post are any indication, then the honorable Mr. Cameron will definitely need a shovel to clean up all of the @$%#& and &$%#@* and ^#$$@& when he is finished sifting through his Inbox.

So, Is He Right or Wrong?

IMHO, he is…

100% politically incorrect and…

100% right on the facts.

Barring any genetic abnormality, such as a congenital leptin deficiency, we ARE responsible for our weight gain.

We choose which food we eat

We choose which beverages we drink

We choose how much we eat

We choose when we eat

We choose where we eat

We choose how much physical activity we get

We choose how long we sit on our butts

We choose our leisure time activities

WE CHOOSE…no one else chooses for us.

So…is this the end of story? Is it all my fault? your fault? the lady with the morbidly obese kids’ fault?

YES

And NO.

Obesity is not the same as alcohol or drug abuse. I don’t need to drink or smoke, but I do need to eat.

I just don’t need to eat bacon and Bagel-fuls and processed food-like products and high fructose corn syrup and Big Macs and Beefaroni and Slurpees and Frosted Flakes and triple latte mocha sugar bomb coffee desserts and……

And while it is 100% my fault if I choose to eat obesogenic processed foods, there is a systemic problem that contributes to the obesification of modern humans.

Tax dollars.

Western governments have decided to subsidize the production of obesogenic foods with your tax dollars. This has allowed big food producing companies to become giant food producing conglomerates able to pump out cheap calories that are nutrient deficient leading to a perpetual hunger for more cheap calories.

And those tax subsidies are unlikely to ever be repealed. The American (processed) food lobby spends a LOT of money and applies a LOT of pressure on government representatives to keep pumping tax dollars toward the big food corporations. This keeps the price of processed foods artificially low and the price of healthy foods comparatively higher.

Which…if you are on a strict food budget (and have kids addicted to processed food), makes it difficult to break the habit of buying obesogenic food.

Difficult…but not impossible. It is still YOUR choice to buy food that makes you and your fault that your kids are fat and unhealthy.

NOTE: In addition to voting with your wallet, feel free to combat the lobbyists by writing all your political representatives a “sternly-worded” letter threatening to organize a campaign against their re-election unless they start taking the health of your kids into consideration.

Or…like most of us, you can do nothing and be surprised when your kids become fat & unhealthy.

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During her investigation, Lawrence arrives at some startling conclusions:

A “half dozen heavily subsidized commodities – soya, rapeseed/flax, palm oil,corn, sugar and rice – are broken down into their individual parts and endlessly reconstituted and sold back to us as processed foods or turned into animal feed to produce the factory meats that have conquered our diets in the past half-century.”

Lawrence coins this shift towards assembly line food production as “food Fordism”.

The Brazilian rain forest is being cleared for farmland on an unprecedented scale. Companies like Cargill and ADM have worked with the Brazilian government and farmers to create a rapidly growing soya bean industry within the Brazilian rain forest.

Her description of how foods like soya have to be chemically manipulated to make them suitable for human or livestock consumption might just put you off your next soy milk Starbucks latte.

The U.S. – European tariff agreements that were part of America’s post WW2 Marshall Plan allowed heavily subsidized US food, animal feed and fertilizer exports to enter the European markets and take over market share. “In other words, the raw ingredients for today’s global food system have been kept cheap for transnational corporations by government policy.” “And where U.S. subsidies go, western diets have a habit of following. American imports have created whole new patterns of consumption.” “Demand has been a function of price, availability and production.”

The U.S. government subsidized it’s agricultural commodities to the tune of $165 billion. Soya, corn, rice, wheat and cotton account for 90% of that money.

The real beneficiaries of these subsidies have not been the American farmer, but the agricultural commodity trading companies – Cargill, ADM, Bunge and the Louis Dreyfus Group, collectively referred to as ‘the ABCD companies’ .

Lawrence casts an especially jaundiced eye at Cargill.

She quotes Brewster Kneen, the company’s unauthorized biographer, as saying “Cargill is the undisputed ruler in the global grain trade and extends its tentacles into every aspect of the global food system.”

A description of Cargill’s history describes how it “initially built up its power in the 1870s, in the speculative era of the American agricultural frontier when U.S. grain, along with sugar, began providing the fuel for workers in an industrialising, urbanising Britain.” She goes on to compare it to Britain’s fabled East India Company. Cargill’s own description of it’s own operations proudly boasts of the activities that Lawrence warns us of.

According to Cargill’s company brochures: “We buy, trade, transport, mill, crush, process, refine, season, distribute around the clock and around the globe.

And: “We are the flour in your bread, the wheat in your noodles, the salt on your fries. We are the corn in your tortillas, the chocolate in your dessert, the sweetener in your soft drink. We are the oil in your salad dressing and the beef, pork or chicken you eat for dinner. We are the cotton in your clothing, the backing on your carpet and the fertilizer in your field.”

Yikes….But don’t worry, apparently things turn out all right in the end.

While Lawrence may have presented a bleak look at the current global food supply, she boosts our spirits with the following:

“History shows that empires rise and fall, however, and that the fall when it comes tends to be fast. Food empires are likely to be no different. We are now entering a period of rapid transition. The postwar food system, dependent on prodigious quantities of crude oil for its production, has not only pushed us to our biological limits but is hitting the environmental buffers”.

“After half a century in which they shaped the nature of global diets with the disposal of their agricultural surplus, the Americans have done a sudden about-turn. With the price of oil constantly breaking new records, they want their surplus back to keep their cars on the road. The U.S. government has started pouring subsidies into the production of ethanol from corn. Grain prices have been soaring. the standard commodity parts are no longer cheap, but we are left with the legacy of the old economic order, with diets that were created out of excess.”

Double yikes…..Global warming and high oil prices are supposed to save us from the evil food conglomerates.

Rear Admiral Steven Galson, the U.S. acting Surgeon General, is calling on the nation’s doctors to prescribe exercise to patients who would benefit from being more physically active. Thanks to the support of the California Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, over 2,000 doctors have just signed up to support this new initiative.

While the new rules prohibit discrimination, they do allow employers to offer rewards to nonsmokers, employees with a LDL cholesterol level under 200 or a BMI below 25.

Here is where it gets a little bit 1984.

While employers can’t tell an obese employee to lose weight or a smoker to quit, they can require the heavy employee to participate in nutrition classes and the smoker to track their smoking habits.

Usually these programs are administered and monitored by a third party company. This company’s responsibilities would include assessing the health risk of the employees, helping them set goals, providing the wellness services and monitoring their efforts/results.

They are also the judge of whether or not the employee achieved their wellness goals. If the employee met their particular goals, they would receive their wellness incentive (usually a reduction in their insurance contribution). If they didn’t, there would be a financial penalty.

WHO data also shows that the major risk factors for chronic disease are:

an unhealthy diet,

physical inactivity,

and tobacco use.

The WHO also claims that if the major risk factors for chronic disease were eliminated, at least 80% of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes would be prevented; and 40% of cancer would be prevented.

However, without action, 17 million people will die prematurely this year from a chronic disease. 17 million people dying from diseases caused by their own lifestyles.

Groundbreaking ideas… More doctors, more money, more tests, more money, more technology, more money, and live a healthy lifestyle.

Not very original – spend taxpayer dollars and tell them what they already know to be true – smoking is bad for your health, being obese is bad for your health, stress is bad for your health, etc.

Is there a Solution?

Instead of spending more taxpayer dollars on doctors, MRIs and health promotion commercials (Like this ,this, this) , how about we offer taxpayers who live a ‘healthy’ lifestyle a reduction in income taxes?

Behavior modification through reward rather than punishment.

Now if only we could create a global lobby group to push this agenda to our respective governments.

83% of the 1500 respondents would be more likely to stay at their jobs if they believed their employer was interested in maintaining their health through education and prevention.

75% thought more highly of employers that offered it in the workplace.

According to Chris Bonnett, a member of the surveyem advisory board and president of H3 Consulting, “[employees] are looking to their employers for support and access to health education and programming.”

PRO

It’s great that Canadians are more interested in their health and that their employers may see a beneficial link between the employees’ health and their value to the company. Not like the good old days.

CON #1

The survey was conducted by Sanofi-Aventis Canada – the Canadian affiliate of the Sanofi-Aventis Group, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. No conflict of interest there.

What are the odds that Sanofi-Aventis might have some suggestions as to the type of health education and programming (their word) that the employees should have access to?

CON #2

Who is going to say no to free stuff? Sure, pay for my gym membership. I’m down with that.

It would be much more honest to ask employees if they would be interested in having their employer pick up half the tab for fitness memberships, etc.

CONCLUSION

At the end of the day, any health promotion / disease prevention plan is a good thing. And what a surprise that in Canada, the home of socialized medicine, that business, not government is leading the way.

On April 8, 2008, Canada’s federal government tabled bill Bill C-51, designed to “modernize the Food and Drugs Act”.

The Bill “proposes to maintain a rigorous assessment of health products prior to making them available. In addition, we’re proposing to gain the ability to continuously monitor the safety of products even after they are approved”.

Sounds good.

We don’t want any tainted vitamins, herbs, etc, getting into the marketplace. And if they do, the government has taken the power and responsibility of recall from the manufacturers and given it to themselves.

So, essentially what the government is doing is asking the natural health product industry to prove that their products will do no harm. Once proven, manufacturers will be able to make claims of efficacy like the pharmaceutical industry.

This may even improve the business model for nutritional supplements in Canada. Vetted health claims might increase the legitimacy of the industry in the public’s eye. And yet, something doesn’t seem right with this piece of legislation.

Here is my problem with Bill C-51 – What are they protecting us from?

In 2006, the U.S. reported one death associated with the ingestion of vitamins. Specifically, it was an unknown vitamin & it was reported that while the vitamin played a part, it was unlikely that it was the cause of death. How they would know that if the vitamin was unknown, I will never know.

Compare that to the 2006 data for Pharmaceutical deaths. The full report is here.

Here are the Pharmaceutical Categories associated with largest number of fatalities (Top 25)

Jeremy Sammut of ABC News (Australia) wrote an article in which he argued that government sponsored programs that promote public health don’t work.

While his focus is specific to the Australian experience, he claims that Australia’s government has squandered public funds on advertising campaigns…and this claim may be applicable to both Europe and North America. The fact is, obesity is on the rise in the both the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds. Attempts by national or regional governments to promote a healthy lifestyle have largely been unsuccessful in reversing this trend towards obesity.

Sammut makes a few very interesting observations.

First, he claims that when government assumes the role of health nazi/nanny, it absolves the individual of “their primary responsibility for the unhealthy lifestyle decisions they continue to make”, and as a result, “the lifestyle disease ‘epidemic’ is blamed on a lack of government-funded entitlement to preventive primary care”.

This takes us to his second point; “the limits of government authority over individual behaviour, and the importance of personal qualities in regulating it – why nearly 40 years of health promotion has coincided with ascending rates of lifestyle disease”.

And if we are going to allow government to assume authority over our behaviour, we have to question the motivations behind this program.

Quite often, “advocates of more spending on lifestyle disease prevention often draw false parallels with the success of the campaign against tobacco smoking”. This argument is specious in that smoking bans and the ‘sin’ taxes applied on tobacco products are examples of public health regulation, not health promotion.

You would think that applying this model to public exercise and nutrition would be near impossible. Smokers were a minority group and their behaviour was found to be less than enchanting by a large portion of the population. Simply put, the majority ganged up on them and enacted laws that made smoking a financial and logistical pain in the butt.

How would government apply this strategy when the majority of the population does not exercise, eats junk food and has no intention of changing?

Odds are, they would start with the children. Apply a little parental guilt. Ban junk food from school (already happening). Slap a sin tax on ‘junk food’. Expand that tax to include bacon, eggs, cheese, filet mignon, etc…

And while that is unlikely to happen, Sammut’s argument is that the health promotion programs advocated for by certain lobby groups, prepared by marketing companies and approved by governments have not been successful.

In Canada, advocates of the ParticipACTION program (historical info) have considered it a success due to it’s longevity and the fact that “two years after the agency had ceased to operate in 2001, almost 80% of Canadians still recognized the ParticipACTION logo and message”.

My Two Cents

As much as I appreciate the light that Dr. Sammut has shined on this subject, I was a little disappointed by his conclusion.

“It is therefore timely to review the evidence. Because when the assumptions are questioned and the evidence examined with a clear eye, what is revealed is that there is actually slim support for the belief that preventive public health policies – be they ‘community-wide’ or ‘high-intensity’ lifestyle interventions – have in the past brought obesity and lifestyle disease under control, or that they are likely to in the future”.

Review the evidence?

Do nothing?

While I agree that most if not all governments have a great talent for throwing great big bags of money at problems that they have no hope of solving, does that mean that as a society we are doomed to accept gluttony and sloth as our birthright?

Here are two possible solutions.

In the U.K., doctors are able to write prescriptions for exercise.

Personally, while I believe that this plan is flawed due to the fact that when the government is looking to spend public dollars, there will always be bureaucrats and service providers ready and willing to overcharge and under-deliver. However, to be fair, I should mention that this program has not been in operation long enough to show whether it is successful or not.

Another possibility would be to offer tax refunds to those individuals that can prove that they are pursuing a healthy lifestyle. Instead of demonizing the couch potatoes amongst us, reward the energizer bunnies.

Newsweek reports that as of this past Monday, New York City’s health department began ticketing restaurants that haven’t complied with the new law requiring them to post calorie counts on their menus. By the end of Monday, five restaurants had been ticketed.

Lucky for them that the citations were little more than warnings. They carried no fines, because a federal judge had said the city could not impose fines until mid-July. When imposed, the fines will range from $200 to $2,000.

And what about those rebels that refuse to go along with this by-law? While the New York State Restaurant Association has taken the city of New York to court over this issue, the restaurateurs themselves seem to be falling into line.

And just to make sure they do, the form that the city gave to the offending restaurants carried the warning that the health department “expects that the conditions will be addressed promptly.” The form cautioned that “any recurrence of these conditions could result in further action being taken.”

Maybe they should call in McDonaldland’s former Chief of Police, Big Mac.

Over the last few days, representatives of the U.N. met with 27 international agency heads in the Swiss capital, Bern, to chart a solution to food price rises that have caused hunger, riots and hoarding in poor countries.

As reported by Reuters, the United Nations said today that “We consider that the dramatic escalation in food prices worldwide has evolved into an unprecedented challenge of global proportions.”

This group, consisting of the heads of U.N. agencies, funds and programs, the IMF and the World Bank under the leadership of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon , will set priorities for a plan of action and make sure it is carried out.

The recent surge in food prices is said to be due to several factors, including:

increased demand in developing countries,

higher fuel costs,

drought in Australia,

the use of crops for bio-fuels,

and speculation on global commodity markets.

The group is also urging countries not to use export bans as a tool to maintain the food supply of their own country.

So let me get this straight:

World leaders (business, gov’t, NGO) use the IMF/World Bank to encourage the governments of ‘developing nations’ to sell farm land to multi-national corporations. Farm land that used to sustain the native population is used to grow flowers and other export-only crops like coffee and cocoa.

Al Gore and the environmental-industrial complex creates an atmosphere of fear and political correctness throughout the world. The expansion of bio-fuels is one of the results of this fear.

The financial leaders of the world create another world wide panic over sub-prime mortgages and the related ABCP.

We are told that the world is running out of oil.

We are told that as China & India grow, oil supplies will become more scare due to increased industrial and automotive use.

Now we are told that the world is running out of food.

What the @**&%$#??? Why do we give ‘these’ people any control over our lives?

The 100 Mile Diet is not really a diet in the modern sense (a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce ones weight). It is truer to the ancient Greek definition diaita, which means literally, manner of living.

The 100 Mile Diet is a practice of deprivation; it is a manner of living or lifestyle.

Originally coined by James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith , the 100 Mile Diet refers to the practice of consuming food that has been grown, manufactured or produced within a 100 mile radius of the person consuming the food.

On the first day of spring in 2005, James and Alisa chose to confront the fact that when the average North American sits down to a meal, they are sitting down to foods that have travelled over 1500 miles. In an attempt to confront and bring attention to this practice, they decided to only consume food and drink that was produced within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.

When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled at least 1,500 miles—Alisa & James call it “the SUV diet.” On the first day of spring, 2005, Alisa and James chose to confront this unsettling statistic with a simple experiment. For one year, they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Soon after they began to chronicle their experiment on their blog at thetyee.ca, the blogosphere and ultimately the mainstream media became aware of their 100 Mile Diet. With this unexpected attention, came the creation of a grassroots 100 Mile community.

People all across North America began to look at the food they ate in a new way.

What am I eating?

Where did it come from?

What goes into it?

What are the repercussions of consuming this food?

There is also a connection between this diet and the proponents of this diet (known as locavores) to the concept of sustainability. And while the terms, locavore and sustainability may be relatively new, the concept is not.

The connection between food and ethics has been explored in literary form in the books:

The BBC has reported that 83% of U.K. consumers “believed irresponsible marketing was making it harder to encourage children to eat well”. The survey was conducted by Which?, the U.K.’s largest independent consumer organization.

The survey also found that “most of the 2,000 questioned want the government to do more to control the marketing of unhealthy food to children”.

Currently, the Brits have banned television commercials promoting junk food programmes aimed at children under 16.

Supporters of this survey are now calling for complete ban on junk food advertising on ALL programmes aired before 9 p.m. Additionally, they are requesting the government impose rules addressing junk food advertising on the internet and on packaging.

The ‘icing on the cake’ argument was offered by Clare Corbett, a food campaigner at Which? Corbett said “With childhood obesity and diet-related health problems on the increase, the government must take serious action and soon.”

To summarize:

Junk food is bad

Advertisers brainwash children into wanting junk food

Children pester their parents

Parents feed their children junk food

Children get fat eating junk food while watching television ads about junk food

The U.K.’s largest consumer protection group asks parents if the government should be doing more to keep their children safe from obesity

Parents overwhelmingly agree, demanding that the government solve childhood obesity by removing the offending advertisements.

Advertisers produce another survey indicating that “76% of UK adults believe that introducing a 9pm watershed on food advertising would not reduce the level of childhood obesity”.

The government is left to decide if banning all junk food ads on t.v. before 9 p.m. will win them the next election.

Your daily dose of reality

Junk food is bad

We are genetically disposed to prefer sweet, salty, greasy, calorie dense foods. We crave these things as a mechanism of survival. Genetics. Millions of years.

Advertisers know this. Food manufacturers know this. They sell us what we want. If we don’t want it, we won’t buy it. If we don’t buy it, they won’t sell it.

Every parent knows that feeding your children junk food while sitting them in front of the t.v. is guaranteed to make them fat.